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Jeremy Bentham (; 15 February 1748 (4 February 1747 )〔 (W. Johnson, "Ancestry of Jeremy Bentham" (2012). )〕 – 6 June 1832) was a British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. He is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom" of his philosophy the principle that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong". He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalising of homosexual acts.〔Bentham, Jeremy. ("Offences Against One's Self" ), first published in ''Journal of Homosexuality'', v.3:4(1978), p. 389–405; continued in v.4:1(1978). * Also see Boralevi, Lea Campos. ''Bentham and the Oppressed''. Walter de Gruyter, 1984, p. 37.〕 He called for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty, and the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known in recent years as an early advocate of animal rights.〔Sunstein, Cass R. ("Introduction: What are Animal Rights?" ), in Sunstein, Cass R. and Nussbaum, Martha (eds.). ''Animal Rights''. Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 3–4. * Francione, Gary. (''Animals – Property or Persons" ), in Sunstein and Nussbaum 2005, p. 139, footnote 78. * Gruen, Lori. ("The Moral Status of Animals" ), ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', 1 July 2003. * Benthall, Jonathan. ("Animal liberation and rights" ), ''Anthropology Today'', volume 23, issue 2, April 2007, p. 1.〕 Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights, calling them "nonsense upon stilts".〔 * Also see 〕 Bentham's students included his secretary and collaborator James Mill, the latter's son, John Stuart Mill, the legal philosopher John Austin, as well as Robert Owen, one of the founders of utopian socialism. On his death in 1832, Bentham left instructions for his body to be first dissected, and then to be permanently preserved as an "auto-icon" (or self-image), which would be his memorial. This was done, and the auto-icon is now on public display at University College London. Because of his arguments in favour of the general availability of education, he has been described as the "spiritual founder" of UCL, although he played only a limited direct part in its foundation.〔(UCL Academic Figures ).〕 == Life == Bentham was born in Houndsditch, London, to a wealthy family that supported the Tory party. He was reportedly a child prodigy: he was found as a toddler sitting at his father's desk reading a multi-volume history of England, and he began to study Latin at the age of three. He had one surviving sibling, Samuel Bentham, with whom he was close. He attended Westminster School and, in 1760, at age 12, was sent by his father to The Queen's College, Oxford, where he completed his bachelor's degree in 1763 and his master's degree in 1766. He trained as a lawyer and, though he never practised, was called to the bar in 1769. He became deeply frustrated with the complexity of the English legal code, which he termed the "Demon of Chicane". When the American colonies published their Declaration of Independence in July 1776, the British government did not issue any official response but instead secretly commissioned London lawyer and pamphleteer John Lind to publish a rebuttal.〔Declaring Independence: The Origin and Influence of America's Founding Document. Edited by Christian Y. Dupont and Peter S. Onuf. University of Virginia Library (Charlottesville, VA: 2008) pp. 32–33. ISBN 978-0-9799997-0-3.〕 His 130-page tract was distributed in the colonies and contained an essay titled "Short Review of the Declaration" written by Bentham, a friend of Lind's, which attacked and mocked the Americans' political philosophy.〔("Short Review of the Declaration" ) (1776) as found in (The Declaration of Independence: A Global History ) by David Armitage〕〔See 〕 Among his many proposals for legal and social reform was a design for a prison building he called the Panopticon. He spent some sixteen years of his life developing and refining his ideas for the building, and hoped that the government would adopt the plan for a National Penitentiary, and appoint him as contractor-governor. Although the prison was never built, the concept had an important influence on later generations of thinkers. Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that the Panopticon was paradigmatic of several 19th-century "disciplinary" institutions. Bentham became convinced that his plans for the Panopticon had been thwarted by the King and an aristocratic elite acting in their own interests. It was largely because of his brooding sense of injustice that he developed his ideas of "sinister interest" – that is, of the vested interests of the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest – which underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform.〔Schofield 2009, pp. 90–93.〕 More successful was his cooperation with Patrick Colquhoun in tackling the corruption in the Pool of London. This resulted in the Thames Police Bill of 1798, which was passed in 1800.〔An Act for the More Effectual Prevention of Depredations on the River Thames (39 & 40 Geo 3 c 87); 〕 The bill created the Thames River Police, which was the first preventive police force in the country and was a precedent for Robert Peel's reforms 30 years later. Bentham was in correspondence with many influential people. Adam Smith, for example, opposed free interest rates before he was made aware of Bentham's arguments on the subject. As a result of his correspondence with Mirabeau and other leaders of the French Revolution, Bentham was declared an honorary citizen of France.〔Bentham, Jeremy, Philip Schofield, Catherine Pease-Watkin, and Cyprian Blamires (eds), ''Rights, Representation, and Reform: Nonsense upon Stilts and Other Writings on the French Revolution'', Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002, p. 291.〕 He was an outspoken critic of the revolutionary discourse of natural rights and of the violence that arose after the Jacobins took power (1792). Between 1808 and 1810, he held a personal friendship with Latin American Independence Precursor Francisco de Miranda and paid visits to Miranda's Grafton Way house in London. In 1823, he co-founded the ''Westminster Review'' with James Mill as a journal for the "Philosophical Radicals"a group of younger disciples through whom Bentham exerted considerable influence in British public life.〔Joseph Hamburger, ''Intellectuals in politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophical Radicals'' (Yale University Press, 1965); William Thomas, ''The philosophic radicals: nine studies in theory and practice, 1817–1841'' (Oxford, 1979)〕 One was John Bowring, to whom Bentham became devoted, describing their relationship as "son and father": he appointed Bowring political editor of the ''Westminster Review'', and eventually his literary executor. Another was Edwin Chadwick, who wrote on hygiene, sanitation and policing and was a major contributor to the Poor Law Amendment Act: Bentham employed Chadwick as a secretary and bequeathed him a large legacy. An insight into his character is given in Michael St. John Packe's ''The Life of John Stuart Mill'': A psychobiographical study by Philip Lucas and Anne Sheeran argues that he may have had Asperger's syndrome.〔(Lucas and Sheeran 2006. )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jeremy Bentham」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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